The UK General Election 2019. All you need to know.The UK General Election 2019. All you need to know.
Plus, a great betting opportunity guide as a bonus.
As we all know, The UK General Election is to take place on 15th of October, deciding the fate of the country not only for the next 5 years, but for the decades to come!
The need for the election was obvious, given the Brexit impasse in the parliament, that was unable to deliver Brexit for more than 3 years, sabotaging the will of the people. Having a Remainer prime minister without the real majority did not help the cause either.
Now, with new Brexiteer prime minister Boris Johnson at the helm, and the ERG-the European Research Group, the eurosceptic parliamentary fraction within the Conservative party, the country has got a chance to see some real action. Yet, we saw the parliament going to great lengths to sabotage the new government, ranging from using the powers of a scandalously biased speaker- John Bercow, to prevent voting from happening to using the newly created supreme court, who’s politically motivated decision undermined the government and the Brexit proceedings.
Getting to the election was a massive struggle in itself with the opposition blocking the motion to call for an election, which Implies the oppositions grim outlook on its electoral prospects.
Now, with less than 8 days to go, let's have a look at the election scene the way I see it.
So, the Tories are leading in the polls, entering this election as a ruling party, with some recent success in the Brexit talks, a charismatic energetic leader, and a clear Brexit position, which is now declared to be the hard Brexit, with a proper trade deal afterwards. The, who wins this election will decide not only the manner of leaving the EU but also the future relationship with the Block.
Brexit seems to be the key focus issue of the Tories in this election, and they are trying to steer all the debate into this channel. There is a grain of salt in there for Boris, however, as he promised to take the country out of the EU by 31st of October, and, as we can see, he did not. Not his fault though, but, a good aim for criticism for the competitors.
There are some spending promises from Tories too, for NHS In particular, which seems to have become the sacred cow of UK politics.
Boris Jonson himself is both an asset and a liability in the increasingly «presidential» in style UK elections. He is vocal and charismatic, bold and aggressive. Compared by many to Donald Trump in both the political style and in the way he looks. Some might remember him as a liberal mayor of London, for others, especially the young swing voters, his Brexit stance and his style might be a massive put off.
On the bright side, one of the highlights of the last debate was Boris’s clear position on Scottish independence. He said that the Union is more important than Brexit and than anything else, which is appealing to the part of the electorate that values the Union, which, let's be honest, is a majority, even in Scotland. Seats before current parliament dissolution: 298
Labor, in contrast, is entering the election mired In the antisemitism scandal, with Jeremy Corbyn as a leader and an unclear Brexit position. Corbyn, being a geriatric incoherent Marxist, who miraculously managed to become the Labor leader is a massive scarecrow for swing voters of all stripes.
The last election momentum surge, that deprived the Conservatives of their majority was largely due to the voter’s delusion of Labor being a Ramain party. That advantage is gone, with labor spending all 3 years of Brexit struggle sitting on a fence, calling it “constructive ambiguity” and now, becoming a second referendum party. Labor wants to renegotiate Boris Jonson's deal and then put the result to another public vote, with the Remain as a second option.
Unsurprisingly, Labor talks mainly about the “starved” public services, the river of cash for the NHS, the free broadband for everyone, in addition to their plans to nationalize Water, Rail, and Electricity.
More free stuff for everyone paid for by the money form the magic money tree, which is how Labor sees the government borrowing and taxation. Should labor get in power, having half their plan done is certain to put the country on the brink of insolvency. They call that ending the austerity, which turns out to be a maximum affordable level of spending when put under scrutiny. The fact that the public services used to get more funding in the pre-crisis Labor era simply means that the latter tend to spend beyond the means.
Another cornerstone of labor criticism of the Conservative opponents is the trade deal with the US which might be struck, should Brexit go as planned by the current government. Labor screams about the dreaded chlorinated chicken, lower labor protection and the sacred cow-the NHS being up for sale for the US health providers. For that, it is only fair to repeat Jonson’s joke, that the only chlorinated chicken here is Jeremy Corbyn himself. Seats before current parliament dissolution: 243
Lib Dems gamble on being a Remain party, with the policy to cancel Brexit seems to have backfired, with such pandering being perceived as unconstitutional and undemocratic by most of the people. Also, fake grotesque confidence exhibited by its newly elected leader, styling herself to the next Prime Minister which is almost impossible, has turned voters away.
The third mistake was remaining fiscally conservative, as it was expected for the Tories to go on a spending spree, so the Lib Dems wanted to appeal to the Tory voters, who are disappointed with the so-called current conservative's swing to the right, but who can’t vote labor. Having a female leader- a fresh face that is not mired in the “dirt” of the coalition years might help, yet, I don’t see the Lib Dems as a formidable contender. Seats before current parliament dissolution: 20
SNP- the Scottish independence party is interesting to watch with the independence talk being reinvigorated by Brexit, with not only the majority of Scotts voting Remain in the Brexit referendum, but also, previously, many voted to stay in the UK during the Scottish independence referendum, because of the UK’s membership in the EU. Now, with the UK set to leave the EU, SNP is making the case for another independence referendum, arguing that the post-Brexit UK would be such a different country, that another referendum is needed. Seats before current parliament dissolution: 35
The other parties are most likely to keep their insignificant number of seats and are largely irrelevant for this analysis. Independent MP’s: 24, DUP:10, Others:22. The total number of seats in the house of commons:650.
There is another interesting element in this election: the Brexit Party. A newly formed party starring in the latest EU parliamentary elections, which theoretically were not supposed to take place in the UK due to Brexit, humiliating Britain with its inability to get the job done.
The party is Nigel Farage’s child, who is arguably the most notorious and well-spoken Brexiteer, who advocated for the UK leaving the EU for the last 20 years.
The party was meant to be a boogieman for the Tories, pushing the latter further south on the scale of the Brexit hardness, threatening to steal the leave voters from the tories around the country.
The Brexit party's current position exposes the inadequacies of the UK’s current electoral system. The first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, where single MPs are picked per constituency on a non-proportional basis, means that smaller parties have virtually no chance of getting any representation in the parliament, ensuring the two main party’s lead position.
UKIP- the UK independence party, a former Nigel Farage’s project is a perfect example of the inflexibility of the FPTP system, with the UKIP polling in 7-12 percent at times, yet failing to get a single MP in the commons for years.
Voters might like your agenda, yet people vote for the party that has got chances of being in power at the end of the day. In other words, it is theoretically possible for the party to get 30% of the popular vote, but with it being distributed evenly among the constituencies, the party gets ZERO representatives in the parliament.
The recent study shows that nearly 14 million voters are living in constituencies that have been held by the same political party since at least the second world war, with some not having changed hands for more than a hundred years.
The Brexit party’s power, while having no chance of getting a single MP, is in that it could steal some voters from the Conservatives in each constituency, delivering victory to the Labor.
That is how it was supposed to work. This position might have shifted the Conservatives position, so the plan worked. Now, however, with the Tories being the only ones, who can deliver any Brexit at all, Nigel Farage said they are not targeting Conservative seats.
The same complication haunts the Lib Dems, with the Conservatives saying: vote Lib Dem-get Corbyn in power. And that is a reasonable claim.
It is clear, that this election is going to be about who you hate the least, not the who you like the most.
With no one having made a single major gaff yet, the campaigns have been quite dry and boring, the debates were toothless and uneventful. Taking this into account, with just a week left to go, the polls and the common sense suggest a high chance of the Conservative majority, with the bookmakers supporting this view with 2/5 odds on this scenario vs 6/1 on the Labor Minority being a second likeliest one.
Labor Minority, which Implies that Labor takes more seats than the Conservatives, yet less than needed for the majority, is wildly unlikely, due to the fact that Lib Dems are mostly targeting Labor seats. SNP might gain in Scotland, taking seats from both labor and Conservatives. So Torie seats are largely the only ones, that Labor can be targeting , which will prove to be a hard thing to do, given the current poor state of the labor party.
Tories minority government seems to be the second likeliest option to me with the odds around 10/1 making it an excellent betting opportunity. Here is why. If Tories don’t get the majority, labor might indeed try to form a coalition government by promising SNP a second independence referendum and offering Lib Dems a seat at the table and a second Brexit referendum with even softer Brexit option on the table. Labor will need both SNP and Lib Dems to form a coalition, which makes it an unlikely option, given the limited time given to form the government and the difficulty and instability of the Trilateral relationships. The prospects of the coalition are further undermined by the Lib Dem's bad memories from the coalition with Tories. Will they risk another one? Who knows. The unlikelihood of the coalition government is reflected in the 22/1 odds, making it a formidable betting option too, because, while being less likely than the Conservative Majority/Minority government it is still possible given how volatile politics has become.
Common sense suggests that the Tories majority is the best scenario for the UK now, as this option provides certainty with regards to Brexit, makes the US trade deal possible, and keeps the Union intact by denying the SNP their second referendum, which is an insane endeavor, to begin with. Not least because they had one already. And such votes are supposed to be a once in a generation thing at best. You can't just throw in an independence vote now and then for a laugh. Also, we can trust the Conservatives to be fiscally responsible, which will help the country prepare for both the possible global crisis and the headwinds of the first post-Brexit years.
On a side note, Brexit and all the other issues that the UK faced in the last 5 years exposed an outdated political system unfit for the 21st century. The need for the electoral reform, giving more power to smaller parties while also allowing for the new ideas to come onto the political scene, forcing major parties to adopt, is clear as day.
There is a need for a written constitution too, now that the UK has got a supreme court, which was able to overturn the decisions of the government recently while being unelected and unlimited in the scope and direction of its decisions by a written constitution. Finally, a radical decentralization is crucial to keep the Union, or one, and also to allow for the county to be run more efficiently, whereas now almost all the power rests in London.
The end.
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